December 3, 2014

Lemon Bird Preserves

We have a super awesome studio visit to share with you today – A couple of months ago we stopped by the Lemon Bird kitchen to say hello to our pal, Amy Deaver. Lemon Bird will be selling their jams and preserves at our LA Holiday Market on December 13+14 at the beautiful Grand Park in Downtown LA. We loved seeing where Amy and her team craft and package their delicious jams and preserves.

Lemon Bird Preserves is an artisan food company tucked away in the beautiful mountains of Wrightwood, California. Lemon Bird was formed when Amy traveled to the South of France on a family vacation and rediscovered a love of canning and jam making. Almost a decade later, and Lemon Bird remains one of the most creative jam companies around!

Amy creates handcrafted jams and pickles using local, pesticide free fruit from family farms. The jams and pickles are made with all natural ingredients and feature the best seasonal produce from the Southern California region.

All of Lemon Bird’s jams and pickles are sourced with produce from local farms. The jams and pickles are 100% handmade in their Wrightwood kitchen. Amy loves being able to pick up her fruit orders directly from the local farm, especially when the fruit is picked that day. All of the fruit used is processed and prepared by Amy and her jamming helpers.

Amy crafts her jams in small batches in traditional French copper kettles (which we are in love with, by the way) and each batch typically takes 2-3 days.

Amy was kind enough to create two lovely recipes for us and we are so thrilled to share them with you! These appetizers are easy to create from scratch and perfect for your upcoming holiday parties! Or perhaps after seeing all these photos you’ll get hungry and make them now – we won’t judge.

Cheese Bites with Lemon Bird Padron Peppers

This super easy recipe combines homemade candied walnuts, delicious cream cheese and cheddar, and more, plus Lemon Bird’s Pickled Padron Peppers. All this recipe requires is a little mixing of the cheese mixture, forming the cheese into bit-sized balls, refrigerating, and then when you’re ready, roll them into the pecan pieces.

Amy’s bite-sized corn bread bites combines all good things: goat cheese, prosciutto, and Lemon Bird fig jam! Need we say more??You can see the perfect way to layer each ingredient on top of one another for the ultimately cute holiday appetizer.

Want to see larger photos of the process? Take a look at all the images from the Lemon Bird studio visit on our Flickr page.